My Purple Scented Novel by Ian McEwan | PenguinRandomHouse.com

About My Purple Scented Novel

A jewel of a short story from the author of Atonement and Nutshell—“My Purple Scented Novel” follows the perfect crime of literary betrayal, scrupulously wrought yet unscrupulously executed. Published to celebrate Ian McEwan’s 70th birthday.

“You will have heard of my friend the once celebrated novelist Jocelyn Tarbet, but I suspect his memory is beginning to fade. . . . You’d never heard of me, the once obscure novelist Parker Sparrow, until my name was publicly connected with his. To a knowing few, our names remain rigidly attached, like the two ends of a seesaw. His rise coincided with, though did not cause, my decline. . . . I don’t deny there was wrongdoing. I stole a life, and I don’t intend to give it back. You may treat these few pages as a confession.”

Praise

“No one now writing fiction in the English language surpasses Ian McEwan.” —The Washington Post Book World

“One of the most accomplished craftsmen of plot and prose.” —The New York Times Book Review

“McEwan is a literary pointillist—in control of each keystroke, creating small, precise masterpieces that delight with their linguistic prowess.” —O, The Oprah Magazine

“There’s nothing McEwan can’t do.” —The Christian Science Monitor

About Ian McEwan

Ian McEwan is the bestselling author of seventeen books, including the novels Nutshell; The Children Act; Sweet Tooth; Solar, winner of the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize; Saturday; Atonement, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award and the W. H. Smith Literary Award; The Comfort of Strangers and Black… More about Ian McEwan